Faith and the #MeToo Movement

Faith and the #MeToo Movement

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Faith and the #MeToo Movement

Posted June 12, 2018

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KPCC, in partnership with the USC Annenberg Knight Program in Media and Religion, hosted a panel discussion on faith communities and the #MeToo movement that included CRCC’s executive director Brie Loskota and Najuma Smith-Pollard, program manager at the USC Cecil Murray Center for Community Engagement, along with Edina Lekovic and Eugene Hung, and hosted by Josie Huang of KPCC.

The #MeToo movement has upended long-standing power dynamics that support the tacit acceptance of sexual misconduct against women in the worlds of politics, entertainment and technology. A similar culture of suppression and misogyny often exists in communities across the spectrum of religious practice and belief–from Zen Buddhism and evangelical Christianity to Islam and Judaism. Will #MeToo galvanize a new push for women’s empowerment within these traditions? As the movement begins to penetrate faith communities, how will it affect rituals and theologies that are sometimes resistant to shifts in the mores of wider secular culture?